for 19 January 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Hit & Run I agree with your French and movie-going tidbit. I sat through that same La bûche movie on an Air France flight and was glad that it put me to sleep. One remark: Marc Caro did not direct Alien 5 (or 6 or 4??) in Hollywood: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, his Delicatessen and La cité des enfants sidekick did. Thanks. Jean-Pierre Jacquet <jpjfilms@cybercable.fr> You're right. The two of them should patch things up and get back together, since the two movies they did as a team were orders of magnitude better than the Alien film. Yr pal, Tim  Dear Sucksters, I'm sorry that you're bored with the Olympian disdain, because I'm absolutely lovin' it. A fairly new Suck-o-phile, I regularly read your essays and cartoons while drinking the days' first cups of java. This helps me to attain the proper attitude to make it through the day in which higher paid and supposedly better educated physicians try to make my life a living hell. Appropriately, I am looking waaaaaaaaaay down my nose as I type this. Ever yours, Kellie Thorne <kthorne@uswest.net> If you're a physician and you're not happy with your co-workers, why don't you just poison them? I've been trying for months to get somebody to do a Suck oncology on Dr. Swango, but what I really wonder is what other doctors say about him. Do you sit around in the hospital cafeteria, reminiscing? "Dr. Giggles, Dr. Mengele ... They were OK. But Dr. Swango, boy, he's in a league all his own!" When you get in an argument with another doctor, do you say, "You're lucky I don't Swango your ass!"? When the doctors go out for drinks, do you come in the next day saying, "I feel like I've been Swango'd!"? At the Christmas party, do you excaim, "Hey! Who put a Swango in the egg nog?"? That Dr. Swango! If he's not your hero, you don't deserve to live in a free nation. Yr pal, Tim Subject: Ceci est une bombe (pas vrai, c'est un message) Dear Sucksters, it's the first time I take time to criticize your work, but I will sure enjoy it. The movie you refer to in the fragment: "... about more crowd-pleasing topics than drag-queen funerals ..." is just not French as you say it comes from the Republic's auteurs. In fact, I guess you're talkin' about the new Pedro Almodóvar, who is, in fact, quite Spanish to me. The movie title is, in English, All About My Mother; in Spanish, Todo Sobre Mi Madre; and in French, Tout sur ma mère (as I've seen it, since French is my main language). So please, don't try to pretend being cultural when you can't even know the origin of a good movie. Or at least ask the good people. Richard Huot directly from Quebec City and still a bit French <rebel69@megaquebec.com> I'm sure you felt a nice, rectum-tightening burst of pride at being able to correct us "culturally," but you're wrong. The movie in question is Ceux qui m'aiment prendront le train, in which an artist leaves a last request that all his various friends and lovers take a long train ride to his funeral. The talents of Jean-Louis Trintignant and other fine performers are wasted in the course of this film, and Vincent Peréz steals the show as a zany transsexual named Viviane. Just to bring the circle around, I note that you have a Quebec mailing address. The director of this film, Patrice Chéreau, turned in a first-rate performance in Michael Mann's Last of the Mohicans playing General Montcalm. Montcalm, you will recall, was killed at the Battle of Quebec, as was his opponent, the British general Wolfe. However, the British forces prevailed, which is why you are now compelled to send out your nit-picking emails in non-idiomatic English, rather than in the French with which, one assumes, you are more comfortable. Keep trying to catch us, though. We average about 28 errors per day, so it should be easy to do. Yr pal, Tim Subject: Re: Dead-on? Or put upon? Dear Sucksters: Gene Rayburn above Curtis Mayfield? Oh, come on. I enjoyed Match Game as much as any other schlep, but I would put Rayburn no higher than fourth in the pit parade, behind Mayfield, Rick Danko, and Madeline Kahn. It's debatable, I guess, and one can only wonder if the occasion would cause them to debate if they were indeed holed up in a compound somewhere near Roswell, waiting either for The Rapture or the return of The Price Is Right to prime-time television. Impressionistically yours, Tim Nekritz <nekritz@dreamscape.com> As long as Brett Somers, Dick Gautier, and Charles Nelson Reilly have breath to draw, we give top honors to the late Gene Rayburn. Yr pal, Tim Dear Tim: It could have been much worse. You could have flown back via SAS, where all announcements are given in three languages (one of which — Flemish — is spoken by three people in the universe) and the movie was The Runaway Bride, with Flemish subtitles. It wasn't a total loss; I got to read your excellent December Wired article in the airport in Brussels. (I'd keep Batman, by the way, at least in the better graphics versions. I was once offered an original, signed Batman poster for several thousand dollars and actually had to think about it before saying no, so fine was the original work.) and, without anything at all to do for 8 hours, was able to finish Dubliners. I highly recommend it for air travel; after finishing it, you're able to view landing in an overused, fog-hidden, Y2K-infested JFK airport without worry, contented that you don't have to live in Joyce's Dublin. Alan S Kornheiser <ASKornheiser@prodigy.net> Air France did show Just Married (Ou presque) dubbed into French, and I have a question about the Flemish version: There's a scene in which a woman named Fleming asks Richard Gere, "Have you heard my husband's morning radio show, Wake Up with Flem?" How can you translate that bon mot into Flemish? Yr pal, Tim What happened to you with French cinema? You're bored with the Figaro cinema's entries. OK, French people went to see your American movies. It's only for one reason. You Americans only think money, money, money. Your movies are demeasurated and ultra-expensive to attract the most people you can. I won't speak about American advertising, which is as expensive as the movies themselves. Most of your movies are action movies, and a lot of times we can see enormous patriotic messages (I think about ID 4 as the most patriotic movie I've never seen). But where is the real life here? You Americans have been since your childhood attracted by big spectacular shows like Catch or big Dragster or bombing Iraq on the TV. (Note that I don't disclaim the fact you fuck Sadam, just the fact you like to show war and a lot of things that get on my nerves.) All that is to say that your movies need to be spectacular shows with strong men, etc. The French go to see your movies only because of ads you make for them and because they have their eyes opened wide by your special effects. But there is no artistic creation, only shit. Sorry for my English and my mistakes, but I hope you understand me and will think about what I said. One last point: American people are not the center of the world, nor are French people nor other people in the world. Excuse me for my direct style, but I strongly think that I'm right. My name is Julien. I'm a 22 years old and French. <JULIENHERNANDEZ@aol.com> PS Even I'm a fanatic of Star Wars! I know it's pleasing to believe that advertising is a magical force which turns ordinary people into mindless zombies and forces them to shamble down to theaters where they unhappily watch "demeasurated and ultra-expensive" films like Dans le peau de John Malkovich. But unfortunately for your theory, the tradition of individual liberty is almost as strong in France as it is in the United States. If a movie makes a lot of money, it's because many people freely chose to see it. In any event, the point isn't that Hollywood makes dumb, expensive, special-effects-heavy movies (a song we've all heard so many times before that you should really be ashamed to be singing it again). The point is that, at the moment, Hollywood is also making better serious movies than France. For all the praise lavished on films like Gaspar Noé's Seul contre tous by people hoping to find any signs of life in French cinema, you guys have not been producing anything to compete with The Limey or Magnolia or In John Malkovich's Skin. You can make all the excuses you like, but excuses are like assholes. Everybody's got one, and they all stink. Yr pal, Tim Hey, Sucksters. This email is a response to your recent pathetic whining request for flame mail. Well, let ME flame you, SUCKERS!!! YOU SUCK!!! YOU'RE A BUNCH OF STINKY FOO-HEADS!!! YOURE ALL ... oh, hell, I can't sustain it. Never mind. I do like your online magazine thing, whatever it is. It's usually at least semi-amusing, even when I disagree with it. And it's free, which is pretty hard to beat, so there you go. The parody of /. was particularly giggle worthy. Oh, wait, I do have something to flame you about after all! You live in New York, don't you?!! YOU SUCK!!!! I'll bet you fancy New Yorkers all think that everybody else in the rest of the country is a bunch of illiterate, uneducated, uncultured, and stuff-like-that hicks!!!!! I tell you what; y'all wouldn't be spoutin' that city-slicker talk if y'all had the GUTS to come out west here, where we's know how to deal with folks like yew!!!! Y'all 'ud be lucky if we didn't sic our hound dawgs on yer butts, and chase yew all across the county line!!! I bet you just envy us anyway. I've never been to New York, but I saw Taxi Driver and Six Degrees of Separation, which are both documentaries, so I KNOW that NY is an ugly, polluted, trash-filled, dangerous place where taxi drivers shoot at you and you can get arrested and disappear for the simple crime of being Will Smith when he was younger!!!!! It's times like this when I'm proud to say that I live in a beautiful, sunny, happy, peaceful town like Seattle!!!!! Besides, I think we're closer to Canada, so when the US finally goes belly-up like all the survivalist nuts say it will, we'll be able to sneak across the border before they install the electrified razor-wire fences. Hey, speaking of Canadians, they're a wacky bunch, aren't they? Eh? Ha! What brilliant wit! I'm so much smarter than you! Screw it, I still don't care. Yrs sncrly, Erin <jia_maebashi@ yahoo.com> PS If you want to make money off this letter, you're crazy: You can't make money off anything I write! I have a stack of rejection notices as thick as your thumb right here that says it's impossible to make money off my writing, so nyah! Thanks for honoring our request, and Happy New Year to you. Yr pal, Tim Subject: This is the picture I saw when I woke up Attached is what I got. I'm from Seattle. Pleasa, no more Kenny Geesa. Kenny G. Sucks <kennygsucks@excite.com> Your email address strongly indicates that you are some kind of specialist. We were only appealing to the casual Kenny G. appreciator. Yr pal, Tim Hi, I'm just saying this once. Don't put Kenny G.'s smiling picture on my "homepage" again. You do, and you won't be my homepage. I'll change it to drudgereport.com, where I go anyway. I almost pucked. I didn't need Kenny G. five times today. I know you are so postmodern and isn't it funny, but dear god, it isn't. OK???????? Charlotte Quinn <music@speakeasy.org> Wow, you almost "pucked"? Thanks for visiting Suck five times in one day. We actually have an award for most-frequent visitors, you know. the Sucksters Live and Let Die Subject: "There is no acting underwater." Does this apply to Jackie Chan in Supercop? maybe not. Slapstick is more about over-acting than acting, I suppose. <John_Osmon@ Dell.com> When Jackie Chan or, say, Jerry Lewis in The Errand Boy, do underwater scenes, they're all about the condition of being underwater: what it can do to the human body, how it looks, what it feels like. They deal with it, they have a reason for doing it, it's about something. They at least try to come up with something original. In the Bond films, the underwater scenes are just there because they're supposed to be there. As I mentioned, Apted doesn't even deal with how his actors look underwater. He doesn't even go for the cheap Denise-Richards-gets-wet- in-tight-top shot that any other director wouldn't have been able to resist. (Do we live in such chaste times? Or would that have driven the budget higher?) Instead, Apted does nothing but cause yawns, cut to bad jokes, and wait for the sound of feet shuffling out of the theater to a theme song made out of samples from glory-period Bond music. The audience leaves feeling heavier, but in actuality, they're 9 bucks lighter. So, yes, I guess slapstick is a special case. Jackie Chan knows that action-adventure is practically the same thing as slapstick; the makers of the Bond movies think ... what? That tensionless scenes shot on obvious sets through portholes are entertaining? Beats me. Thanks for writing, Slotcar Hatebath Subject: quick ... If the answer is 42, what was the question? ma x <JacobMrley@ aol.com> If this is a joke about how Russ Meyer made a movie called Up!, skip it. Slotcar Hatebath Subject: Please do something about Magnolia Agggghhhh! More of this "James Bond is so passé, he doesn't ride a snowboard" stuff — I'm sick of it! I admit that most critics are too well-bred to go after Apted, and Denise Richards stank with a capital S, but it was a James Bond movie — a weak one, but it had James Bond. If the series could bounce back from A View to a Kill, you know it can bounce back from the many weak moments in this new one. The real question here is when are one of you guys going to go after Magnolia? It's a complete bloated sacred cow, and it's just sitting out there being surrounded by ever-growing flocks of worshippers. And it's just this pomo version of Love, American Style, just like American Beauty was a pomo version of Married ... with Children! Aren't you guys going to do something? If you don't, who will? Richard Von Busack <regisgoat@earthlink.net> I never said that Bond was passé because he doesn't ride a snowboard. In fact, I don't give a rat's patoot about snowboards, and I resent that you assume I do. My piece was about how similar the new Bond flick is to a seemingly dissimilar one with which it shares its director. But if I didn't get that across to you, I didn't get it across to you. Critics would never go after Apted, it's true, but Denise Richards was without question the best thing in that movie, possibly because she was immune to the Aptedian boredom layer. You underrate A View to a Kill. Do the names Christopher Walken, Tanya Roberts, and Grace Jones not mean a thing to you? They should all be in Magnolia! It's true that Magnolia worship is annoying, but I haven't seen it yet. Whether it's good or bad, it's not the fact that a movie like American Beauty shares plot points with a sitcom: It's that it shares its attitude. It's not the genre but what you do with it that counts. The guy who made American Beauty gave us Happiness Lite with the shame a little sunnier — or was that just Kevin Spacey? The accolades for that picture still mystify. Maybe the director of Boogie Nights will get another genius performance out of Cruise like Kubrick did. If it's anything like Short Cuts, however ... Slotcar Hatebath Subject: 42 squared is ... oh, a hell of a lot Dear SC: Oh, come on now. Twelve people saw 42 Up, and I was in the theater with eight of them. Where did you find your copy? To compare it with the Bondian stuff is ... well; it's damn clever, and your points are good ones. Still, the Up movies are about social class, and to comment on them and to miss that point is to rather miss the whole idea. But yes, the Brits are very not-us. If we didn't happen to speak the same (or similar) language, we'd appreciate how very not-us they are. It was a clever piece. Thanks. Alan S Kornheiser <ASKornheiser@prodigy.net> I don't know where you caught 42 Up, Dr. K, but in my town, it played for two weeks in a limited run to rave reviews. I disagree with your idea that the Up movies are about class. Just because Apted says they are does not make it so. The group of subjects strikes me as pretty homogenous, frankly, even though one is a wealthy lawyer, one a forklift operator, one a formerly homeless councilman, etc. In fact, Apted homogenizes them and smooths over their differences to portray them as a cohesive group, which the Up series has to some extent made them. The entire last half-hour of 42 Up was so tacked on, and the discussion of class so perfunctory, that it could've been chopped off and not missed at all. That was just Apted patting himself on the back in a maddeningly reasonable way that cut off real discussion. I don't buy it. The reason the series can never be about class is because the concept was flawed from the get-go. It's just so uncinematic and experimental in a bad way. It's a gimmick, and like all gimmicks, it's a form of exploitation. If it were honest about this (or if it were a good gimmick), I could deal, but it can't be. It is blind; a problem in a documentary as far as I'm concerned. It's always good to read your views, and thank you for writing. Slotcar Heathbar |
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